By Satish Roy, Chief of Customer Experience – mPokket
The fintech market in India continues to be extremely competitive. Some statistics highlight its salient features. The Economic Survey 2023 noted that at 87%, the country enjoyed the highest fintech adoption rate among the public versus the world average of 64%. Furthermore, India’s fintech market is expected to touch a healthy $150 billion by 2025, rising from $50 billion in 2021.
While the financial services segment in India operates under stringent regulations and large-scale operations, it has traditionally offered commoditised services based on a one-size-fits-all approach. This presents an opportunity for improvement in consumer experiences and for expanding access to top-tier financial products and services for all sections of the population.
Importance of seamless CX
One cannot overlook the fact that CX in financial services is crucial since it influences customer satisfaction levels. In turn, this depends on providing seamless experiences across all touchpoints, beginning with the initial contact, right up to the final delivery and the consumption of financial products or services. Significantly, CX in financial services goes beyond merely offering excellent customer service. Instead, it involves ensuring frictionless, personalised experiences that surpass expectations across every stage of the customer’s journey.
Be it banking, insurance or investment services, the ongoing digital transformation has substantially enhanced the expectations of customers. Today, speed, convenience and personalisation are taken for granted. As a result, financial entities that provide superior CX enjoy a clear competitive advantage in both attracting and retaining their customers, leading to increased profitability.
Not surprisingly, Forrester’s research reveals that a one-point improvement in the CX Index score of a large MNC bank can mean an incremental rise of $123 million in revenue. Given this scenario, fintechs and other financial players must consider it a prime priority to understand and enhance their CX.
Navigating complex regulatory environments ensures financial integrity. Regulations uphold standards, protecting consumers. Compliant firms earn trust, enhancing reputation alongside prioritising customer experience for competitiveness in the market.
Varied ways to boost CX
There are several ways to go about boosting CX. To begin with, tech-savvy customers expect their financial transactions to be fast, frictionless and convenient. Therefore, be it fintechs or traditional financial players, they must provide customers with a range of channels for interaction, including mobile banking, online modes and physical branches. Moreover, these channels need to be fully integrated so that customers can switch between different channels, if required, without disruption.
To further enhance the consumer experience, NBFCs need to understand the preferred communication channels and leverage tech to ensure customers can restart the in-app journey from where they dropped off is essential. Additionally, for prompt action and to improve customer relations, companies need to adopt a new-age multichannel engagement model and leverage social listening tools to resolve queries.
The importance of seamless integration is highlighted by a Deloitte survey. It found that 86% of customers use ATMs or branches to access the primary bank, 84% opt for online banking and 72% prefer mobile apps in doing so. Besides, regardless of the channel or platform they use, customers expect a seamless CX across every touchpoint, whether it is the online banking service or interacting with customer care representatives via a call centre.
The same Deloitte study discovered that the quality of customer interactions decided whether they would recommend the bank to others and determined loyalty, with 70% of customers believing consistent experiences across channels were extremely important in deciding their primary bank.
For this, establishing a robust feedback loop is crucial for continuous improvement. Actively seeking and acting on customer feedback ensures that the services and products offered are constantly evolving to meet customer expectations and needs.
Personalisation and the common cause
Additionally, personalisation is a major expectation in driving customer satisfaction. Customers expect their service providers will offer personalised financial products based on their preferences and banking history. Accordingly, the design process of products and services should be customer-centric and based on an in-depth understanding of consumer needs, habits and preferences. In addition, the flexibility to adapt and innovate as per changes in customer trends and expectations is essential.
This requires a data-driven approach, wherein AI algorithms and predictive analytics are used to understand evolving customer needs and preferences. AI-enabled technologies could assist financial entities in pinpointing patterns and trends in consumer behaviour and capturing relevant feedback. By using this data to segment the customer base into distinct personas or groups as per age, income, banking behaviour and other characteristics, fintechs can customise products and services that pivot on specific consumer needs. Thereby, customer interactions can be enhanced and silent attrition reduced.
Another huge challenge that’s often overlooked is the failure to properly evaluate the impact of CX efforts. Most firms pay attention only to select enterprise-level metrics connected to revenue, NPS (net promoter score), customer retention and satisfaction. However, they overlook challenges such as long customer journeys, particularly in services like lending, making it tough to trace the overall CX impact across varied touchpoints. For instance, simply measuring NPS isn’t enough. Firms must assess the reasons behind any movement, be it an increase or decrease.
Finally, it’s critical to ensure that all executives in the organisations across various departments are aware of the common goal for an excellent CX. Without a shared or common vision across the entire organisation, different departments may not work in concert with the overall objective. Consequently, it is imperative to ascertain that all levels across the company are working for the common cause of providing an excellent customer experience. An organisational symphony that plays in harmony can then produce the best CX results.